Beneath Infinity
by ajfb
Summary: "There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world." - Carl Sagan, 1995. In the distant future - beyond an age of gold, surpassing a dark fate - the soul of a young man is torn from the dirt in which his old bones rest. In this new world he must choose whether to learn to battle the abrasive forces of the pitch blac
1. A Spark in the Frey

_As the ship curled through the air, flames dancing around the hull in a scorching ballet of ash and smoke, the loudspeaker crackled into life for the final time._

 _"All control of the ship has been lost. I repeat, all control has been lost. Brace for impact."_

 _Crumpled together like sandbags on a flood barrier, they huddled close and awaited their fate. In the end, the people on board the shuttle did not have time to brace. They did not have time to say goodbye; to confess things that should have never stayed secret; to consciously be with their wives and husbands and children for their final moments._

 _They could only hold one-another and weep for their stolen time._

 _And then, as the rounded body of the ship struck the rock and stone of the blackened Earth, they died._

Skittering along the rocky outcrop of exposed canyon beneath the hulking wreckage of an old colony freighter, a tired little machine searched for a spark of Light in the endless Darkness. She was old now - even for a Ghost - and her patience and hope were being drawn from dwindling reserves. As she scanned the ground beneath her she felt the presence of a thousand souls, all trapped in a limbo between Dark and Light - destroyed by one, but never abandoned by the other, even after millennia in the dirt. The Ghost pushed her sorrow to the back of her mind. She was not here to mourn the dead - there had been enough of that. She was here on the same quest that she had been following for close to two hundred years now; the search for one spark of Light that was brighter than the others, that cast its glow the farthest and repelled the Darkness with the greatest ferocity. When she found that spark she would use her own Light to revive a being who would assist the last remaining city on Earth in the fight against that same Darkness.

A spark this bright was rare, however. Exceedingly rare. It could only be found within the residue of a soul with the purest of hearts and most selfless of desires. A creature of the kindest disposition. This was what Guardians of the city were made of; the sole want for the amelioration of Earth and the lives of its inhabitants.

The reason she had chosen to search this particular area - an open plain of gravel and shrubs which had been blackened by relentless Arc cannon strikes from Fallen Ketch ships in orbit and scarred by the impact of the crashed ship - was due, morbidly, to the sheer number of deaths that had occurred here as the evacuation freight shuttle had been shot down as it had tried to break orbit. The more people that had perished in an area, the higher the chance was that a Guardian could be found among the wreckage. The Ghost whistled through ancient rusted debris, some shards nearing six storeys, protruding from the ground like thrown knives. She scanned the ground and scrap as she went, picking up signs of Light and of potential subjects for revival.

She was following an old tarmac road towards the centre of the wrecked shuttle; towards the epicentre of death which harboured, ironically though not comedically, the greatest abundance of Light. An old road sign stood, crumpled and torn at the side of the road. The Ghost stopped, distracted by writing that could still be read faintly:

 _'EDINBURGH 14 MILES'_

This meant nothing to her. The city the sign referred to had been annihilated long ago, along with all the rest. She blinked twice, her vibrant green eye glinting in the spitting rain that had just started to fall, and moved on.

As she neared the main body of the ship, a sudden cry rang out in the distance, throaty and terrible to unaccustomed ears. The Ghost stopped dead. This was not what she had planned for. She was confused. Fallen - the fierce, territorial pirates who had led many of the strikes on the Last City since the collapse of the Golden Age - never ventured this far East. She replayed the cry over and over in her head and identified it as a scouting party, presumably from the House of Huntsmen; the Fallen House who had claimed rule over most of the large island once known as 'Britain'. She had to hurry. The rain, now coming down in sheets, would mask her movement until the scouts drew close enough to see her through the scopes of their Wire Rifles. This gave her time, but not much. Dimming her eye to avoid glare, her search continued.

Twenty minutes after the first cry had rang out over the wasteland, the second one came, this time it sounded substantially closer. It reverberated off of the peeling walls of the shuttle's interior. The Ghost frantically searched through the body of the ancient vessel; through room after room after room of debris and faint wavering pools of Light. If she was not hasty she would be captured and tortured by the scouts for information. She had seen it happen - ghosts left as nothing but smouldering husks of their former selves, drained of Light and intelligence. She refused to allow that same fate to befall her. She quickened her pace to a rush. Finally, her scanners picked up something different. Something she had not felt in a very long time.

"Could it be?" She whispered to herself in the musty darkness.

There was a chamber with a locked door but she could still feel it: The sheer force of the Light behind the steel plating. She closed her eye and activated all of her sensors at once. It bathed her in warmth as she drew closer, the same sort of warmth she had only felt from being near a Guardian or the Traveller itself. The tendrils of Light wrapped themselves around her tiny body and drew her near. Excited she opened her eye and began to work frantically on unlocking the damaged door. She dissolved the hinges and it came crashing down below her, falling through a hole in the floor and tumbling into the dark of the upturned vessel, smashing into walls with a force and racket that she only assumed could be heard for miles. If the Fallen had not known she was here then they certainly did now. Entering into the room she activated her torch and scanned the surroundings. It was a medical bay. All of the equipment had slid down the sloping floor and had piled up against the far wall, creating a huge bastion of ancient rust and fabric. Bones were dotted around the room, scattered like skittles.

In the centre of the chamber were six Light signatures, clustered and interwoven, with another signature slightly detached from the rest. This was the source of the Light the Ghost was feeling. The seventh orb was huge and powerful, pulsating outwards, carving through the darkness. The Ghost gave a small electronic giggle.

"There you are!" She hummed with glee. "I've finally found you."

This was her time. The moment she had prepared herself for. She cleared her mind and summoned all available Light she could muster to herself, her body splitting into orbital form in order to accommodate the power. With a peaceful sigh she focused all of the Light into the seventh orb and formed a glowing mesh around it, using its residual Light memory to begin to sculpt a body. She drew directly from the distant Traveler itself and used the power to knit flesh and bone back together. Blood and organs formed and skin appeared in a transmatic flash of blue and silver. Finally, the Ghost dematerialised an amount of the surrounding metal and fabric from the bulk of the freighter and used it to fashion a basic cloth covering and lightweight armour around the kneeling figure. The final product was a young human male, perhaps in his early twenties from appearance, with a shock of brown hair and pale skin. He was bent over, breathing softly, with his eyes closed and his arms resting on his knees. The Ghost, attempting to mask the elation she felt due to her success, made a sound similar to someone clearing their throat.

"Ehem... Excuse me? Guardian? Can you hear me?"

The man looked up, his eyes blotchy but electric blue, and his mouth opened to speak.

"I... I don't... Where am I?"

"Don't be scared, Guardian. You are alive, there is no need to be wary. I am your Ghost, I found you here and returned you to life because I need your help."

"Wait, I don't understand. I... I died. I remember..."

The man looked around at the rotting carcass of the ship; taking in the rusting walls; the odd angle that it sat at due to its impact; the bones littering the floor.

"Everyone was killed. We were shot down, by a huge brown ship... It chased us for miles... Kept hitting us with Arc blasts. Oh shit..."

He buried his head in his hands as the memories of his death came raging back into his ancient brain. His breath was rapid, the Ghost could hear his heart beating out of his chest. She had not expected him to be this distressed. She hadn't ever had to deal with a situation like this before.

"I... I am sorry, Guardian. I had no idea how you had died. I am very sorry for what you have lost, but I must stress to you that we are being hunted. We must move to a safe place, now."

"Hunted? By the creatures in that brown ship? Hang on, what even are you? Some sort of A.I.? How..."

"Guardian, please. I need you to listen. I will answer all of your questions when we reach safety. Right now I need you to do exactly as I say."

The man looked taken aback at her urgency. He considered this for a moment, his mouth opened to retort, and then closed again.

"Right, ok. You need to promise me that you'll tell me what you did to me and answer all of my questions when we are safe. If you don't then I'm not going anywhere with you."

"Yes, yes. I'll tell you everything as soon as we get back to the City. Now, this way, and stay quiet!"

The Ghost whizzed out of the door. The man took a final look around, his eyes lingering over the bones strewn on the floor. Somehow he knew they were the bones of his family, his friends. He turned away, fighting tears, and made to follow the little machine - his Ghost, it had called itself - into the depths of the freighter.


	2. Onwards

The rain trickled down the rusted metal plating in streams, clean and pure against the worn brown walls. It was cold. The young man could feel it nipping, even through his new grey armour. He was unsure as to how he had come to wear it, about where it had appeared from. Understandably, he was unsure about everything that had happened so far. He simply followed the little Ghost back through the freighter, climbing over cases and ducking under hanging wires and beams that had become dislodged after the crash.

The crash.

He had been dead. _Dead._

This he couldn't believe. How could he have been dead? And now he was back? He wasn't an idiot, it was obvious that the little Ghost had managed to resurrect him somehow, like it had said, but how was that possible? Technological advancement had been monumental after the Traveller had arrived. It had opened the human mind to wonders impossible and magnificent; advanced their culture by hundreds of years; tripled lifespans. Even then, there was no technology that could resurrect the dead. That was science fiction territory. Then again, as he looked at his surroundings more closely. The man was coming to terms with the fact that he had likely been dead for a very long time. The freighter had been clean and new when it crashed - it had never even sustained orbital flight before the emergency evacuation - and now it was a monumental heap of torn plating and crushed corridors, worn by what looked like decades of weathering.

Sensing his mind working to understand his situation, the Ghost nervously attempted to make conversation. She was fairly unsure as to what to say - this was an entirely new experience for her, speaking to one of _her own_ revived, and it was daunting.

"So... Ehm, what's your name, Guardian?"

The man broke from his daze and began to follow her with his eyes.

"I... I'm honestly not too sure. I can't really remember."

"It'll likely come back to you in a few days, usually does," said the Ghost fairly nonchalantly.

"What do I call you?" The man asked.

The Ghost looked puzzled (or about as puzzled as a small floating polyhedral machine could).

"I'm a Ghost. That's what I am, I... I don't have a name. I have never needed one."

"Oh. Ok then. Are you the only one?"

"The only Ghost? Goodness, no. There are hundreds of us."

"So how do you tell the difference?"

"Most other Ghosts have Guardians. They are the people they interact with most frequently. Other Ghosts - like myself until very recently - had little contact with the Tower or the City or any other being for that matter due to the nature of our quest to find a Guardian."

"Right, ok. So now you've found your 'Guardian', what do we do?"

"We need to find a way back to the City and get you to the..."

The Ghost stopped short and reopened her motion scanners. She listened intently through the dripping of rain and the distant grumbling thunder. Something wasn't right. She had sensed the tiniest flicker of commotion in the darkness and knew what it was likely to be. She had been stupid and not quite fast enough.

"Stay quiet," she whispered to her Guardian who was obviously no idiot as he had frozen on the spot and was listening too. Scanning the room in all directions, the Ghost kept as calm as she could.

And then she saw it. The thing she had been dreading. Directly behind her newborn Guardian, the air rippled and twisted like heat waves frozen in time. The shapes curled up swiftly and sparked blue with lightning.

"DOWN!" She screamed as she blasted pure white torchlight into the sensitive eyes of the camouflaged Fallen, its arc knife poised at the rear of the young man's neck. The Guardian dropped and kicked behind him, knocking the screeching and now-visible Vandal onto its back. Rolling over, he slammed his fist down hard into the creature's gullet and recoiled in horror when its neck shattered from the force.

"What the fuck?" He exclaimed, shocked at his sudden strength and ferocity.

"Your armour and internal Light greatly amplify your strength and agility," explained the Ghost, quickly examining the body of the dead Vandal. "I was right; House of Huntsmen. Haste, Guardian. This way. More will not be far behind!"

The young man looked at the broken body of the Fallen beneath him, coming to terms with what it was he had done. He had acted instinctively, as if he knew, somehow, that this creature had deserved to die. It certainly felt evil, a murky black and deadly aura radiating from its corpse. Pushing it to the back of his mind, he turned and ran after the Ghost who had exited the ship through one of the many holes ripped in its carapace. Running to the improvised egress, the man stopped with sudden terror, reeling backwards with his arms flailing in an attempt to avoid tumbling the thirty-or-so feet to the ground below.

"Whoa... Hey!" He shouted at the little Ghost who had floated down to ground easily and was scanning the area. It turned to him and spoke. The guardian jumped when the voice rang loud inside his head, coming from what he could only assume was an earpiece in his helmet.

"Come now, surely a little drop doesn't intimidate you? You just slayed a Fallen Vandal, after all."

"Yeah, well I didn't mean to do that," he answered, assuming she could hear him too. "Will I make this?"

"Yes, of course," the Ghost replied with an apathetic tone. "Like I said, you're stronger now."

"Aha, great." The Guardian looked down and chose his point of aim; a flat piece of ground a few feet from where the Ghost was whizzing around - her scanners working overtime. He looked straight ahead and allowed his feet to leave the platform together, launching himself into the open air. He gasped as the ground rushed towards him quickly, much faster than he had anticipated, and landed hard with a pathetic roll in an attempt to disperse some of the shock of landing. The air was knocked out of his lungs and he knelt for a few seconds, seeking to refill his tired body with oxygen.

"There, not so difficult, was it?" The ghost asked, not striving to hold back the mocking tone in her voice.

"Says you, you weren't dead this morning."

She reconsidered. "That is a fair point. I am sorry. I was only attempting to have a jest with you, I used to see the other Ghosts do it with their Guardians."

"How about we get away from the genocidal aliens before we get the banter flowing, eh?"

"Yes, let's do that." She waited for her Guardian to rise to his feet, still swelling with pride whenever she saw how capable and fierce he looked in his armour. "We shall go this way. I'm picking up some familiar frequencies nearby, hopefully it's a Guardian, or even another Ghost, who can help us get back to the city."

"Sounds good to me. Lead on."

They began heading swiftly East, away from the torched brown shell of the freighter, and towards the signal the Ghost was tracking.

"What is banter, Guardian?" Said the Ghost, an uncertain tone to her voice.

The young man laughed as he jogged along, causing the Ghost to turn to him, seemingly annoyed.

"I'm sorry," he said, noticing her irritation. "Banter is the word we used to use for 'a jest', as you call it. It was a colloquial British term."

"Ah, that makes sense," she said, satisfied.

The Guardian trudged on through the rain - as fast as his new legs could carry him - his little Ghost whistling along beside him, when a sudden thought came into his head and he stopped. The Ghost halted too.

"Jacob," he said with soft remembrance. "That's my name; Jacob Darrow."

"A fine name", said the Ghost, impressed with the speed at which his memories had returned. Humming with glee, she continued on, gesturing for her Guardian to do the same.

She was a very proud little machine. here...


	3. The Bones of Centuries past

The journey did not tire Jacob. He was surprised at this. He had been dead for near three hundred years - judging by the short history lesson the Ghost had given him - but didn't feel stiff or sore in the slightest. His body felt brand new; full of life and electric energy. It was an odd but empowering feeling.

During their hike, the Ghost had done a decent job of explaining what had happened. She had told him of the Golden age - of which he had been a part - and how the Darkness had come during the peak of humanity's evolutionary arc and annihilated everything they had accomplished. This, Jacob remembered. It was during his attempted escape from the creatures known as the Fallen that he had been killed. According to the Ghost, the only thing the Darkness could not defeat was the traveller itself, though it had been gravely wounded. Apparently it still floated just above the surface of the Earth in the same place it always had, casting what little protection it could still offer in a tiny net over the broken surface below it. The humans had become aware of this protection and came together, building the last City of Earth beneath their original Guardian.

The City had drawn everyone to it; any scattered Humans looking for respite; the new species of people known as Awoken who had apparently been created by something called the 'void' during the collapse; the legions of war machines, called Exos, who had lost purpose when their masters had fallen to the hordes of the Darkness, losing their war-mindedness over the years and developing perfect artificial intelligence - or so most theories stated. Supposedly the Exos were now indistinguishable from Humans and Awoken in everything but appearance. Jacob had seen the original Exo program before the collapse. He remembered the sheer power they emanated from their thousand-strong ranks as they abraded the onslaught of genocidal creatures on Earth's doorstep. At the time they had filled him with hope, but they too were brushed aside by the Dark commanders and their armies, flattened in one foul sweep. Jacob shuddered at the thought.

He was unsure as to what would be expected of him when he reached the City and its Tower but he assumed it would involve fighting the same creatures, serving the City to keep the people safe, and - if what he remembered about the Darkness was still the case - dying in the cold once again. He pushed the thought to the back of his head. He had been given a second chance at life, there was no use trying to predetermine what it was that was going to happen in the immediate future. He would just try to take his new existence as it unfolded - one step at a time - and make the most of the new life given to him.

After hours of trekking over rolling hills and overgrown roads, through crumbling ruins of ancient settlements, the Ghost was satisfied that they had put enough distance between themselves and the Fallen scouts who would almost definitely be hounding them across the plains.

"I think we can slow down here," she said, aware that Jacob had been running for somewhere close to three hours.

The relief in his sigh said it all as he slowed to a walk, his armour now smeared with splatters of mud from the wet turf he had been moving over.

"Any idea where to go from here?" He asked the Ghost, still catching his breath.

"The Guardian signal is not too much further. Over this hill, I imagine. I can't quite tell exactly what is emitting it; it could be anything to be honest - a Guardian, a Ghost, a Sparrow, even."

"What's a sparrow?"

"A land-based Guardian vehicle. Something that would come in incredibly useful just now, actually."

"Huh." Jacob scanned his surroundings. There was not a huge amount here. They stood in the middle of another tarmac road, lined with bollards and rails used by the old electric MagLev train system. It was an old and decrepit area, though Jacob found it very oddly familiar. He very quickly realised why.

"I know where we are."

He began making his way up the hill in an aprehensive half-sprint, fairly sure of what it was he would find at the top. The Ghost followed close behind him, intrigued.

The incline was steeper and longer than Jacob had first anticipated and he was tired again by the time he reached the summit. Looking out over a valley and the mouth of a great river, there lay a huge red carcass of twisted metal and blackened struts. It stretched across the entire river, bent and warped out of shape but what were presumably air strikes. Another two bridges, or what was left of them, lay slightly further up the river, running in parallel. Jacob felt a lump rise in his throat. The Ghost hovered by his shoulder.

"This is the river Forth with its three bridges. That one," he pointed to the crimson wreck as it snaked it's way over the river, "used to hold the rail and MagLev trains as they crossed the river. It was hundreds of years old; a real Scottish landmark. It's just... hardly even there anymore."

He sat on the grass and dangled his armour-clad legs over the edge of the hill. Removing his helmet, he breathed the fresh coastal air deeply, scenting the familiar smell of the beach and the sea beyond.

"You were right about them pulling it all down."

The Ghost turned to him, resonating in his sorrow and feeling his loss.

"Earth is a mess, a total wreck - from the bits I've seen in the last few hours at least. I'm amazed anyone survived, to be honest."

He sat for a few more minutes, not long enough for the Fallen to catch up to them, but still aware that they were a danger. The Ghost never left his side. Is this what it means to be human? She was grateful that the Guardian she had found was so full of selfless thought and appreciation of loss, but saddened that he had to be.

Exhaling deeply, Jacob rose to his feet and replaced his helmet over damp eyes. Digging into the turf, he leaned over the edge of the hill to peer into the valley below.

"I see something," he said, pointing to a glinting object moving below them.

"Looks like a Ghost, let's go and find its Guardian".


End file.
